Brief encounter: Can I keep the golf balls in my garden?

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Q: Over the past two years I have found about 12 golf balls in my garden
hit from a garden about 50 metres away. Nobody has come round to ask for
them back — or apologise. What are my legal obligations regarding these
balls?

A: Hitting or kicking a ball on to private land amounts to both a trespass and
a nuisance. This was confirmed by the 1977 case of Miller v Jackson,
where the Court of Appeal decided that a cricket club in Co Durham was
responsible for balls going into the garden of a house — even though the
house